One example of a control housing applied in the field of medicine and surgery is distributed by the applicant of the present invention under the registered trademark “Microspeed® Uni”. This housing unifies a number of control and regulating functions. These functions may be applied to medical instruments or tools which are utilized for various medical, surgical or cosmetic applications. The instruments or tools are connected to connectors at the housing side via plugs at the instrument or tool side. The housing itself and the control electronics accommodated therein, respectively, are connectable via a multi-pole plug connection and an appropriate multi-pole cable to a pedal-operated switch by which corresponding switching or functioning instructions which are in turn converted to corresponding functions of the medical instruments or tools can be output to the housing-side control electronics. At the front side of the housing furthermore a display including a touch panel is provided so as to be able to enter control instructions, functional parameters etc. separately from or additionally to the pedal-operated switch.
Furthermore at the front side of the housing a pump attached thereto, especially a roller or peristaltic-type pump, is provided by which a cooling and/or rinsing fluid can be conveyed to the field of operation or treatment so as to cool a tool running there, to rinse the field of operation etc. The control of the pump usually is performed via the afore-mentioned pedal-operated switch.
Since the housing accommodates electric and/or electronic components, i.e. the control electronics, and the pump conveys a liquid, usually water, it is indispensable for safety reasons that the housing in which the control electronics is provided and the pump are delimited against each other in a fluid-tight manner. This is achieved by the fact that the pump or the housing encapsulating the pump, respectively, is attached to the front side of the actual control housing.
Moreover, the housing must be designed to be EMC tight, i.e. it must act in the manner of a Faraday cage so as to operate in a fail-safe way.
Recently the demand for a wireless and cable-less control option of the housing side control electronics has occurred, i.e. the connection between the pedal-operated switch and the housing is no longer intended to be performed via the multi-wire cable but wireless via an appropriate close-up range radio technology. Due to the EMC tight or EMC safe design of the housing, this requires the arrangement of a transmitting and/or receiving device outside the shielding of the housing so that the wirelessly transmitted instructions can be received by the pedal-operated switch. Such transmitting and/or receiving device located outside the housing or the housing shielding is a drawback or a problem, however, in so far that it constitutes an undesirable mounting or build-up at the housing which protrudes from the outer contour of the housing in an undesirable and unattractive way. Moreover, such mounting or build-up can impede or prevent plural control housings from being juxtaposed or stacked or from inserting them into a rack.
This applies mutatis mutandis to the pump adapted to be mounted to the housing front side: It protrudes to a considerable extent from the surface of the housing front side and in so far is undesirable both aesthetically and in practice, i.e. during operation, as this is a protruding obstacle which naturally is contact-sensitive, at which objects or passing persons can get caught etc.
On the other hand, it is desirable to configure a housing of the type in question so that in operation, high functionality and safety is obtained, wherein especially an unrestricted wireless communication path is to be ensured between the housing-side control electronics and an external control device without the need for any mountings or build-ups at the housing that are susceptible to accidents during operation.